Clastic Sediments of Bird’s Head

Significance of clastic sediments of the Bird’s Head of New Guinea, Indonesia

Indra Gunawan and Robert Hall, completed project

The Bird’s Head of New Guinea is underlain by Australian continental crust and has a relatively complete stratigraphy from Palaeozoic to Recent and it is surrounded by active or recently active tectonic zones. Little work has been done in the Bird’s Head since regional reconnaissance mapping in the 1970s.

This research will focus on clastic sedimentation of the Bird’s Head and its Mesozoic and Cenozoic history that may record some parts of the tectonic history. Little is known about the composition of these sediments or variations in lithologies, and nothing is known about their provenance.

This project will take advantage of techniques familiar from other provenance studies and plan to focus particularly on heavy minerals and zircon dating to provide new data to aid interpretation of the tectonic history of eastern Indonesia.

Conglomerate succeeded by coarse-grained sandstone outcrop of the upper part Tipuma Fm

A little faith and some local help is must on a field season in West Papua